Startups seeking early-stage funding (seed and Series A) got a bigger slice of the Asia-Pacific (APAC) venture capital (VC) investment pie during the second quarter (Q2) of 2021. Subsequently, early-stage funding rounds accounted for 68.2% of the total deal volume in the region during the period, according to GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.
An analysis of GlobalData’s Financial Deals Database reveals that the total number of deals with disclosed funding rounds announced during Q2 2021 stood at 1,480. Month on month, deal volume fluctuated during the quarter. Deal volume decreased by 3.0% from 467 in April to 453 in May before increasing by 23.6% to 560 in June.
In total 341 Seed and 669 Series A funding rounds were announced during Q2 2021, which collectively accounted for 68.2% of the total deal volume.
Aurojyoti Bose, Lead Analyst at GlobalData, says: “Despite the challenging market conditions, VC investors seem to continue backing promising new startups by participating in Seed and Series A funding rounds while late-stage deals such as Series G and Series J were mostly non-existent during the quarter.”
Other funding rounds including growth/expansion/late-stage funding rounds (Series B, Series C, Series D, Series E, Series F, Series G, and Series J) collectively accounted for 31.8% of the total deal volume. Notably, most of the funding rounds’ share as a proportion of total deal volume kept fluctuating during the three months.
April witnessed announcement on one Series J funding round while June witnessed the announcement of one Series G funding round.
Mr Bose concludes: “With the fear of third wave of COVID-19 looming large on some of the key markets such as Japan and India, VC investors are seen shying away from committing big-ticket investments during Q2 2021. However, despite deal activity remaining subdued for most of the period, some startups in the region still managed to gain investors’ traction amid the challenging times.”
